Consumer Assessment of New Creative Products - China and the US

This cross-cultural research investigates how consumers assess creativity in new products and if their assessment impacts desire to own. Implicit and explicit scale-based measures were tested in China and the U.S. in online consumer samples and were positively correlated. Novelty affect and importance dimensions of creative products were tested through Horn and Salvendy’s (2006 2009) Product Creativity Measurement (PCM) scale. Findings point to a different role of novelty in determining desirability of creative new products across-cultures. In fact novelty and affect are key to explain desire to own in China while affect and importance are the drivers in the U.S. Affect which can be viewed as hedonic value is the key driver of desire to own creative new products across-cultures. Individual differences related to demographics tolerance of ambiguity and interest in the study product category were also examined. Findings related to novelty affect and tolerance of ambiguity suggest that traditional cross-cultural views need to be reconsidered. The study has been administered to a sample of 502 consumers aged 18 or older evenly distributed between genders